1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multi-media terminal apparatus which is connected to other multi-media terminal apparatuses via a transmission line capable of transmitting a plurality of channels, and comprises a plurality of multi-media processing functions.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, various multi-media terminal apparatuses for editing and processing various media such as characters, numerals, figures, images, voices, and the like have been developed.
When these conventional multi-media terminal apparatuses are utilized, various peripheral equipments such as a scanner or a television camera for inputting an image, a display or a printer for outputting media, and an optical disk apparatus for recording/reproducing media information, and the like are connected to the terminal apparatuses, and can be used simultaneously.
FIG. 7 shows a conventional system configuration in which a plurality of multi-media terminal apparatuses 90 and 91, an optical disk 92, a television camera 93, a printer 94, and the like are connected via a network 95 so as to share various peripheral equipments, and to share generated multi-media information.
FIG. 8 shows a conventional configuration wherein multi-media terminal apparatuses 130 and 131 to which peripheral equipments such as optical disks 133 and 135, a television camera 132, a printer 134, and the like are connected via a network 98.
However, in these prior arts, of various media processed by the multi-media terminal apparatuses, image information particularly has a large information volume. When image information is transmitted through a network, a time required for transmission is prolonged. For this reason, in the configuration shown in FIG. 7, while at least one multi-media terminal apparatus on the network operates the peripheral equipments to input/output or record image information, and utilizes the network, another multi-media terminal apparatus must wait for a long period of time until the network becomes ready to use even if it wants to utilize a non-operating peripheral equipment. More specifically, a plurality of peripheral equipments on the network cannot be simultaneously operated.
In the configuration shown in FIG. 8, when a given multi-media terminal equipment utilizes various peripheral equipments connected thereto, the above-mentioned problem is not posed since they are utilized without going through the network. However, when the given multi-media terminal apparatus wants to utilize a peripheral equipment connected to another multi-media terminal apparatus via the network, a load associated with various data transmission operations is applied to a processing circuit in a multi-media terminal apparatus to which a target peripheral equipment is connected, and considerably influences processing originally executed by the multimedia terminal apparatus. Thus, the processing itself may be undesirably delayed or interrupted.